Søren Torpegaard Lund invites me into his universe halfway through a sandwich.
It’s about 4pm in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, on the day of the Eurovision in Concert pre-party. The press event, where several of the Eurovision Song Contest 2026 acts have spent half an afternoon giving quick interviews to as many people as they can, has just come to an end.
Most folks would probably call it a day after that. Søren Torpegaard Lund is not most folks.
After taking some much-needed fuel on board, he gives me a thumbs up and a wave. There’s a nice yellow chair to his right with my name on it, and 15 minutes to spend there. It’s a world that thousands of Eurovision fans had a taste of in February – and if they could, they’d stay inside it every second until May.
It’s my turn to step inside.
“My Body is Screaming”
I already know I’m going to ask about that staging.
On Valentine’s Day, Søren prepared to compete in the final of Dansk Melodi Grand Prix 2026, the Danish national selection for the Eurovision Song Contest. This year’s line-up was packed, with many experts predicting a duel for the win between reigning champion Sissal and fresh newcomer Ericka Jane. That was, at least, until the rehearsals.
It starts with Søren, caked in neon blue lighting and shadow, singing in close-up, impossibly intense. He sings: “Min krop den skriger…”. It means “my body is screaming”.
“A guy singing a song” is what the artist himself calls it, when we get onto the beginning of his performance.
“But then I was like, but you don’t know what’s gonna happen. There’s gonna happen a lot from here.”
That’s an understatement. For the next three minutes, Søren spins a sensational story. His song, ‘Før Vi Går Hjem’, is the tale of a boy who is torn between choosing to spend a night with a man he knows he shouldn’t, or heading home to a bed he knows he won’t end up in. He’s trying to swim to his head, but being pulled by the unstoppable undercurrent of his heart.
The song itself is powerful enough to do that – “Hjertet ved hvad det vil, bar’ lad det bestemme”, the line where Søren surrenders to temptation, might be my musical highlight of this year’s Contest – but the staging takes the story into visual overdrive.
On stage behind Søren is a kind of rave box, with dancers in skin-tight clothes enjoying themselves. They call him closer with their moves, inviting him in – moving in unison with only a perspex wall to separate them. This opening sequence represents a kind of loss of innocence, as the “guy singing a song” becomes a guy fully immersed in one.
“It’s Like Your Innocence is Gone”
For Søren, life is imitating art. After his performance tore up the script at DMGP, winning both the international jury vote and the most points from the public, he’s become one of the favourites to win the Eurovision Song Contest in Vienna. As I write this, Søren is both third in the betting odds and third in The Model, our data simulation of what could happen in May. Søren says that he’s felt that same loss of innocence becoming a Eurovision star:
“I feel like I’m growing up a little bit during this as well. I talked with my therapist and she was like, it’s like your innocence is kind of gone. And that’s good and bad.”
With more eyes on him than ever, Søren’s also had to get better at standing up for his story. Success, he says, has meant more people want to play a role within it – and not for the better:
“People are going to tell you ‘if you just scoot over here a little bit or over here a little bit’…and I’ve taken that in, but then I’ve been like, ‘I think I’m just gonna stay in here and try to do this.’”
Søren prefers to keep his team small – by popstar standards, shockingly small. He’s on the Little Yellow House label, one which the man himself calls “itsy bitsy”. As part of the boutique, he’s managed by another Danish Eurovision contestant, Tim Schou, who was lead singer of the band A Friend in London and performed ‘New Tomorrow’ at Eurovision in 2011. Tim’s here as we chat, checking in occasionally, keeping us to time – after all, he knows how this circus works better than most.
It’s a team of two, and Søren says that’s allowed him to stay totally true to himself:
“We’re really friends and we’re part of each other’s lives and we have the best interest in each other. I really cherish that.”
But now, Søren can’t stay in that comfort zone. In front of 150 million viewers at Eurovision, he must step into the unknown.
“Kiss Me, Take My Heart, Break It Again”
As the first pre-chorus ascends, Søren gets closer to the world within the box. He climbs onto the side, wishing for the temptation as he sings “Kys mig, tag mit hjerte, knus det igen”. Kiss me. Take my heart. Break it again.
He reaches the top as the chorus begins, still light in his movement. But out of nowhere, the camera cuts from a wide shot on Søren singing the chorus’s opening line in front of the LED screen to a close-up, low angle from the box itself. The cut comes as Søren smashes into the perspex – it’s almost a jump scare, but it’s scarily effective.
Now we’re the insider looking out.
What makes the moment work is Søren’s connection with the camera. The look on his face when he pushes into the perspex is primal, even lustful. At this point, it’s not that he wants to be at the party – it’s that someone will have to physically hold him back from entering it. There’s something in the whites of Søren’s eyes that tells you everything you need to know about this story.
Around him, the performance turns into pure theatre. Swirling blue lights (and some slightly dirty plastic) create a murky, watery quality to the shot. From the bottom of the frame, the hands of the dancers reach upward, this time directly inviting him into their universe – like sirens calling the sailor into the depths. We already know what comes next.
“I Can Use my Skills to Marry Those Worlds”
That theatricality isn’t just part of Søren’s universe. It’s the backbone.
Søren began his artistic journey in theatre as a young kid. He grew up in the village of Oure in Denmark, situated on the Funen island in the south of the country. In 2025, the population was measured at only 497 people. With so much land and so few people, Søren had the space to begin creating his own worlds – it’s no wonder that Denmark’s most famous storyteller, Hans Christian Andersen, also grew up on the island.
For Søren, theatre was a chance to tell his own story.
“My main word and theme for everything I do is authenticity. That whatever I have or bring or that I have rehearsed for a lot of years has been there from the get go.”
From his early performances, Søren stood out as a prodigy. He trained as a teenager in several disciplines to become what some call a “triple threat” – theatre, dance and music. At 17, the training paid off early as he was accepted into the Musicalakademiet, the prestigious branch of the Danish Stage Arts School in Frederica. He was the school’s youngest student. Ever.
Once he graduated, musical theatre jobs swiftly followed. Most notably, he played the lead role of Tony in West Side Story at the Copenhagen Opera House, winning a talent prize at the Reumert award ceremony for Danish theatre. So, when the time came to craft the ‘Før Vi Går Hjem’ performance, it’s little wonder he approached it from a theatrical angle:
“I said ‘I really want to do a full on stage show because I do musical theatre’. And again, some people are like, ‘Yeah, but this is kind of more pop, so you shouldn’t be too musical theatre’.”
“And I’m like, I know, but I can use my skills to marry those worlds.”
As Søren tells me this, I feel like he’s back in that argument.
“I can sing and dance at the same time. I can convey a narrative. I really want to do that and see if I can live in that world.”
The conviction is so complete that I have to tell him I feel it. Just like in the performance, there’s a whole universe going on in Søren’s eyes.
And, like Hans Christian Andersen before him, he tells me that ‘Før Vi Går Hjem’ is designed to be its own fairytale. When I give him the tough ask of picking out his favourite moment, he says:
“I think maybe the beginning actually. Because the whole setting of the universe and all the surprises that you don’t know you’re gonna get there.”
“But I just love the start of the fairy tale there.”
“The Heart Knows What it Wants”
“I was hanging from my dining table to try to do that and sing at the same time.”
Laughing my head off, I ask if it was a high table. He assures me it was.
In the performance, Søren lets the dancers bring him into the box, flipping him fully as the next verse begins. He drops down, still nailing every note, with the dancers now encircling him and bringing him into their routine. As he starts to move, the song enters a new phase: a harder, club-style beat comes in, and Søren moves forcefully with it. He’s given into his desires.
Those desires cannot be contained. Soon after, the dancers elegantly take his plain white shirt away to reveal a black mesh top underneath. Then, they lead him out of the box and back onto the stage, only this time the journey we’ve been on has changed its context. Søren invited us into his headspace, and now those thoughts are spilling into reality. The world is spilling over into the audience.
And, as the “kiss me, take my heart, break it again” bridge soars again, Søren launches into a simply ridiculous note – a C5, if you’re wondering, fully belted – as he accepts his desires. And embraces them.
It’s just like a musical where the main character has a huge emotional reckoning. The dancers shove Søren centre-stage, the camera lowers to make him grow larger and more imposing, and he blasts the song’s central line:
“The heart knows what it wants, just let it decide.”
“We Were Just Jumping for Joy”
What Søren wanted to do for Eurovision wasn’t so clear at first.
“I was invited by Tim, my manager, to go on a songwriting camp. And I wanted to write three different songs to just explore what is in the world of me.”
It took the team all three attempts to find the magic they were looking for:
“We started with a big ballad, like a Celine Dion ballad. Day two, I wanted to do a more singer-songwriter, folky kind of thing, which is more aligned to what I’ve published before.”
Søren would revisit Celine Dion a little later – covering her 1988 Eurovision winner ‘Ne Partez Pas Sans Moi’ in Danish with the DR Koncerthuset orchestra.
And then, day three – where Søren decided he wanted to try something bolder:
“I want to try to be a pop banger diva!”
What struck me during our chat, though, was that Søren didn’t just wake up that morning and decide to give it a shot. His approach to becoming a popstar was careful, crafted, and based on the music he listens to on a daily basis.
In fact, Søren was concerned about whether he could pull off pop while staying true to himself:
“I’ve never tried to do it myself because…as you know, talking about authenticity and being myself and wanting to convey something, going into that world – that can sometimes get blurred.”
“And I really still wanted to keep that emotional core of the music while wrapping it in glitz and pop.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjLcVqjIkLo&pp=ygUadHJveWUgc2l2YW4gZ290IG1lIHN0YXJ0ZWTSBwkJ1AoBhyohjO8%3D
Søren highlighted Troye Sivan as an example of marrying those two worlds – authentic songwriting with pop glamour. Of course, another parallel is that Sivan is one of the most successful openly gay pop performers of his era. As an openly gay man himself, it strikes me how committed Søren is to being true to himself – no matter how accepting a space the Eurovision Song Contest can be, that is still an incredibly brave thing.
That day at the camp, though, Søren found the fusion he was looking for. As soon as the song came together, as he says, the heart knew what it wanted – and he let it decide:
“And then when we wrote the song, we were just jumping for joy. There was just some synergy in that room. And we immediately knew that was the song we wanted to send.”
“Holding One Another Tight, Until We Burn to Death”
The whites and blues of the stage give way to harsh, fiery red.
The final chorus of ‘Før Vi Går Hjem’ begins, and the song has now fully surrendered to the fire. The intensity is higher than ever, with harsh string plucks adding even more emphasis to each drum beat. Søren sings the chorus again, with even more conviction:
This final chorus almost feels like a victory lap. Søren’s gone on a journey from a doubtful, innocent, “guy singing a song”, to someone who is confidently hitting every step of his dance routine, performing with intensity and passion. He’s one with his backing dancers, and totally within his universe. And so are we.
It’s at this point, as our interview begins to wrap up, that we get onto the biggest question I had for Søren – how he created that universe.
“I think that’s what I’m the most proud of with the whole thing is that the people around me understood what I wanted and understood who I am.”
For him, though, that couldn’t come from pure imagination. Because Søren didn’t so much create a new universe, as create the perfect way to invite us into his.
He told me earlier that everything he did was about authenticity – and that’s true in every part of his performance:
“I didn’t just want background dancers. I wanted everything to be part of everything. And I wanted everything to come out of the song and everything had to support the song also because people will not understand the lyrics. So you need to still understand the world. And I’m very proud that all of a sudden every layer just felt…like they supported each other.”
At the Eurovision Song Contest today, world-building has never been more important. We know that at this song competition, having a great song isn’t the whole story, but creating a narrative around it.
That narrative is formed on stage. With almost everyone watching Eurovision having no clue what to expect from every number, how the song is presented and generates an immediate impression is the most important factor in getting those all-important points on the board.
Søren knows that well. For him, the product is the song, but just as important is making the branding that goes around it feel authentic:
“[Look at] Zara Larsson, she did that this year. She finally built her universe and now it just makes sense because it’s her and it’s so authentic and everything supports that.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvY8fdgezLQ&pp=ygUZemFyYSBsYXJzc29uIG1pZG5pZ2h0IHN1bg%3D%3D
“Before We Go Home”
Tim comes over. He tells me that, before I have to leave Søren’s universe, I’ve got one question left.
I’ve learned so much about his artistic approach, his background, and how he’s thought of every element of ‘Før Vi Går Hjem’ carefully. Of course, he’s let me know that they’re not going to be changing much for Eurovision 2026 – the performance we’ve got is the performance we should expect.
So, I ask him to shut out all the noise around the entry, least of all from the person effusively praising the song every second on the chair to his right. I simply ask him how he wants to feel when he takes this performance to the world’s biggest stage.
“I want the same feeling that I had doing any performance that I do, which is about being in the moment, which is just…”
He looks off-camera, but centres himself again.
“[It’s] sometimes a cliche and so hard to do but it is very real…it is a mental game that you have to play. You have to talk a lot with yourself and say: ‘These are my goals. I want to enjoy this. I know what I have to do. I know what the performance is gonna be.’”
I sense him picturing himself on the Vienna stage, the stage where Søren truly becomes himself.
“Now you have to let it go.”
So do I.
I shake his hand and step away from Søren’s world.
And, as if nothing had happened, he bites into the second half of that sandwich.